


if you close your eyes does it almost feel like you've been here before?

by jonphaedrus



Category: Tales of Xillia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:28:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rift; and what comes before. Written to Bastille's 'Pompeii'. Accompany piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/949911">this</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you close your eyes does it almost feel like you've been here before?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rethira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/gifts).



 

 

 

 

 

_and the walls kept tumbling down_   
_in the city that we love_   
_grey clouds roll over the hills_   
_bringing darkness from above_

 

i. —

Lin is eleven when his father dies. He does not feel sorrow for this; his father was not a very good ruler. His father was just a father. He does feel sorrow for the hundreds, even the thousands, of people who were killed in the tsunami that resulted as a fault of his father's. 

They make him Chieftain in nothing but name. His uncles support him.

Lin bides his time and waits. He waits, because he knows that there is an upstart waiting somewhere out there, someone who thought they were strong enough, smart enough, to take on the Long Dau.

Lin waits to get revenge for his people, killed by rushing water that could have been saved if someone was smart enough to push his father. He would have broken eventually.

 

 

ii. —

He is not an upstart. He is young, but Lin is younger. He is thirteen. He expected to rule as king, but Gaius is eighteen and he's better.

It rankles Lin to think that, but sometimes you have to lose. His father's greatest fault was in not realising that sometimes, you have to lose. There are only two outcomes in life: victory and defeat.

(He does not realise, as a thirteen year old boy who-would-be-king, that there are other outcomes. He does not realise this until he learns it from the man he could have been, and the man who could have been him, that sometimes you have to take the middle ground, and by then it is too late.)

He lost to Gaius, and so he surrenders, and lowers his armies, but raises his sword arm, because he knows then and there: only Wingul will ever be able to kill Gaius. And only Gaius will ever be able to kill him. This is the decision he makes in the snow at the age of thirteen. 

So he raises his sword for Gaius, and becomes the shadow to his light.

 

 

iii. —

It is the first, last, and only time they really fight. He leaves without telling Gaius because he knows what the older man will do, and goes to be tested, to be treated. It's months of horrendous pain and loathing of himself, but when it finally _works_ it's worth it.

The blade hums in his hands. His body is more than his body; it is a tool, it is a construct, it is meant for him to use. He is the sword.

When he comes back, he challenges Gaius to a duel. It's the stupidest and most beautiful thing he ever does. To see Gaius in motion like that, for the first time in almost a decade, makes his heart soar.

He falls in love all over again.

It's hardly a contest, though. Even with the extra power that the Booster grants him, in the end Wingul is on the ground, bleeding, panting for breath, and Gaius stops above him, his sword tip poised inches from Wingul's nose.

"Do not do this again," Gaius says, his voice cold and low and deadly. Wingul, ragged breath, bends forward, clutching the gash on his chest, presses his forehead to the floor before his king's feet.

"Never," Wingul swears in wavering Long Dau.

"If you do, I shall kill you. Whatever is between us be damned."

Wingul knows he means it. He nods. Gaius slowly sheaths his sword, and kneels on the ground to lift Wingul into his arms, and pulls him close, Wingul's hands feeling like liquid attached to his exhausted arms, and Gaius breathes into his shoulder, in shaking Long Dau,

"Do not worry me like that again."

 

 

iv. —

Wingul feels nothing but jealousy for Muzét. He hates that suddenly Gaius defers to her on everything, even though he understands that—he is Gaius' sword arm, he is Gaius' right hand, but even Wingul cannot become a spirit. He would if he could, if wishes were fishes he'd never go hungry again. He hates that Gaius looks at her with the honour and respect that the man doesn't seem to look at him with.

(He does not think that Gaius looks at him with other things. Love, kindness, trust. He does not see that. He sees green.)

So, he starts acting on his own. He hates that he sees Gaius, when he was young, in Jude. He hates that he sees himself inside Rowen, the cowardice he pretends isn't there lurking below the surface, the occasional crack in his armour and belief in Gaius. He hates that Milla is the only person he ever respected who could temper Gaius, and he hates more that he still respects her.

Overall, he hates himself. Wingul looks at his laundry list of failures and hates himself even more. He hates the way that Gaius looked at Jiao, like the man was a match to him, but how he doesn't look at Wingul that way. He hates the way that Gaius speaks to Muzét, like an equal, but doesn't think about how he talks to Wingul like he's worth even more. He hates Rowen, for being the awful mirror of his own failures. He hates Elize, for succeeding at something he failed to do right. He hates Jude, for winning Gaius' respect. He hates Milla, for being strong where he was weak and unable to protect his king. He hates Leia, for not being afraid. He hates Alvin for what Alvin did, for the traitorous bones in his body. 

He hates himself.

So, he leaves Gaius.

He pretends like he doesn't hear the man shouting for him, calling his name, until it's too late.

 

 

v. —

Wingul could have won the fight.

(No, he could not have.)

Wingul could not have survived the fight.

(Yes, he could have.)

There was no other option.

(Yes. There was.)

 

 

vi. —

When everything is done, Milla pushes them back onto Rieze Maxia. Gaius knew from the moment that he saw Milla and Jude, he knew what had happened. It wasn't like he hadn't seen it coming or expected it. 

At the time, he hadn't been able to think. Too much had happened too quickly and too much had been riding on him; on his decisions. He couldn't grieve or mourn.

But when he sees Wingul's body, broken and slumped on the ground, tossed out by the Rift closing once and for all, he can barely stand it. Leia and Elize don't even have time to finish healing his wounds before he shoves both of them off, Elize reaching for him.

Rowen holds her back, one hand on her shoulder, and he whispers something Gaius neither hears nor understands as he stumbles to Wingul's body.

His hair is thrown over his face, there is blood on his skin. He's awfully, awfully pale and he's terribly cold. Gaius kneels beside his body, and slowly reaches out to pry his fingers from around the hilt of his sword, sets it to the side of his body. He fixes the cuts and gashes in Wingul's clothes—tries to ignore the singed spots, the burns. The water-logged spaces, the bruises already forming on his body. He tries, and fails, to ignore the blood that drips from Wingul's ear, his one half-open eye that has an entirely bloodied retina. The blood leaking from his nose.

Gaius knows what killed Wingul.

When he can stand it no longer, he pulls the younger man into his arms. Wingul is cold and stiff, he has been dead too long—Gaius buries his face into Wingul's hair and without meaning to rocks back and forth, cradling his body in his arms, sobbing long and low and soft as his heart breaks all over again.

It's one thing to know that Lin is dead.

It's another thing to see him dead, like this. To hold him. To know he is gone. He is not coming back.

"This isn't what I wanted," Erston whispers, brokenly, into Lin's hair, his Long Dau shaky and rough, hardly recognisable words. "This is never what I wanted."

 

 

He buries Lin Long Dau the next day behind the Xailen Woods Temple, digging with a workman's shovel in the frozen ground and snow until his hands are raw and bleeding.

Gaius never speaks of it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_oh where do we begin?_   
_the rubble or our sins?_   
_oh where do we begin?_   
_the rubble or our sins?_


End file.
